One Person at a Time

Like a lot of people at this stage of life, I still want to feel useful. Maybe useful isn’t quite the right word. Purposeful might be a little closer.

My career is mostly in the rearview mirror now, and I no longer measure my days by meetings, projects, clients, or deadlines. I’m grateful for that part of my life, but these days I find myself asking a different question: How do I want to matter now?

I should say that writing and photography already give me a wonderful sense of purpose. They keep me creative, curious, and engaged with the world, and that is enormously fulfilling to me. But I’m talking here about something a little different - something that reaches beyond my own creative satisfaction and asks whether I can also be useful to other people in some small way.

I don’t mean useful in some grand or self-important sense. I’m not looking for a second career or trying to build a movement. I simply want the things I believe in to show up in the way I actually live. I want my principles to become more than ideas I agree with. I want them to become part of how I move through the world.

And strangely enough, I think that has become easier.

When you are no longer worrying quite so much about earning a living, pleasing a boss, building a business, or proving yourself professionally, there is a certain freedom in that. You can follow your heart a little more easily and pay attention to what feels meaningful simply because it feels meaningful.

Over these past five years, as Carla and I have traveled extensively throughout Europe, I have found myself returning again and again to one very simple idea: that one of the most reliable ways to make a difference in the world is through kindness, one person at a time.

I know that doesn’t sound particularly dramatic. There is no organization attached to it, no large platform required, and no audience to build. But I have come to believe in it more and more.

One of the things I love about travel is that it constantly puts people in front of me. We walk a great deal, so every day we pass hundreds of people. Most of them will remain strangers. We will never know their stories, and they will never know ours. But every now and then our lives cross for a few seconds or a few minutes, and there is something we can do with that moment.

Sometimes I simply say hello or good morning in the local language. Sometimes I notice someone struggling to take a photograph and offer to take it for them. I may compliment someone on a hat, a dog, something they’re wearing, or something beautiful they have created. None of this is remarkable, and that is really the point.

I am not trying to have a profound conversation with everyone I meet. I’m not trying to teach anybody anything, and I certainly don’t wander around thinking strangers are waiting for a little wisdom from me. I’m simply trying to connect - to let another person know, even for a moment, that I see them.

There is a remarkable amount of loneliness in this world. We can be surrounded by people and still feel invisible. We pass one another on sidewalks, sit next to one another on buses, stand together in lines, share cafes and waiting rooms, and often move through all of it without really acknowledging that another human life is right there beside us.

It doesn’t take much to change that. A smile. A hello. A genuine thank-you. A few words that let someone know they’ve been noticed.

I have written about this before, probably because I keep discovering how deeply I believe it. When I look at the world and wonder how I can possibly make any meaningful difference in it, this is the answer I keep coming back to: carry kindness with you, and give some of it away.

What I believe more strongly all the time is that kindness is not simply a nice gesture. It is transformative.

A small act of kindness changes something, even if only slightly, in the person who receives it. They feel noticed, respected, maybe a little lighter than they did a moment earlier. And what happens next is the part we rarely get to see. They may become more patient with someone else, smile at the next stranger they pass, or offer a little kindness of their own.

That is how kindness travels.

We tend to underestimate things that are quiet. Kindness usually does not announce itself. It doesn’t make headlines, and nobody holds a press conference because someone helped a stranger carry a bag or spoke gently to a cashier who was having a difficult day. But quiet does not mean powerless.

One person affects another, who affects another, and something that began as a tiny exchange between two people can travel farther than either of them will ever know. If enough of us choose to live that way intentionally, day after day, those moments begin to accumulate.

That is how I think kindness can change the world.

I don’t mean that kindness by itself will solve every injustice, end every war, or repair every broken system. Some problems require laws, leadership, organizing, courage, and enormous collective effort. But the world is also made up of billions of ordinary human encounters, and the way we treat one another in those encounters helps create the culture we live in.

Are we teaching one another that other people are mostly to be ignored, distrusted, or kept at a distance? Or are we creating a world in which people are more likely to notice, help, encourage, and care?

Every one of us gets to cast a little vote on that every day.

And what I love about kindness is how little it asks of us. There is nothing to buy. You don’t need to read a book, take a course, join an organization, or understand some complicated philosophy. You don’t need money, status, or influence. You can begin today.

You simply have to be willing to bring your heart with you.

And this isn’t something reserved for people like me who are mostly retired and have more control over their time. You can be thirty-eight years old and running a large company and still live this way. Kindness doesn’t require an open afternoon. It happens in the moments already built into our days, with the people who happen to be standing in front of us.

All of this may sound a little strange coming from someone who is an introvert. Every time I have ever taken one of those personality tests, I end up in exactly the same place: INFP. The “I” is for introvert, and I promise you it belongs there.

I enjoy people tremendously, but I also need plenty of time alone. So I completely understand that deliberately interacting with strangers may sound exhausting to some people. Yet these little moments rarely drain me. They often energize me, and I think it is because I am not trying to perform or impress anyone. I’m not asking anything of the other person.

For a moment, it simply isn’t about me. It is about them.

There is something freeing about walking into the world with the intention of leaving a little kindness behind. You don’t have to be charming or outgoing, and you certainly don’t need a big personality. You only have to pay attention.

That is really where kindness begins: noticing.

Noticing the person who is serving you, someone sitting alone, the woman trying to take a photograph of herself in front of something beautiful, the person whose work made a place a little more welcoming. Simply noticing who is actually in front of you instead of remaining entirely inside your own thoughts.

And then, when it feels natural, reaching out.

Travel makes this especially easy for me because I’m walking through plazas, markets, neighborhoods, and cafes much of the day. But you certainly don’t have to travel to live this way. A grocery store will do just fine. So will a workplace, a neighborhood walk, a coffee shop, or almost anywhere people gather.

I think many of us are trying to figure out what we can do right now. The world can feel especially heavy these days, and there are moments when the problems seem so enormous that our own ability to affect them feels almost laughably small.

I understand that feeling. But I no longer believe small means insignificant.

In fact, I think one of the great misunderstandings about kindness is that because the act itself can be so easy, we assume its effect must also be small. But love and kindness have an unusual power. They can change a human encounter in seconds, and because kindness so often awakens kindness, the effect does not necessarily stop there.

Imagine enough of us making that choice every day - not as a slogan or a campaign, but simply as a way of living. We notice people. We acknowledge them. We help where we can. We speak gently. We offer encouragement. And some of the people touched by that kindness carry it forward.

At some point, those are no longer merely isolated gestures. They begin to shape a culture. And cultures can change the world.

Whoever is standing in front of me at a given moment can, for that moment, become the most important person in my world. I can look at them, listen to them, offer a smile or a kind word, and treat them as though their life matters.

Because it does.

At this point in my life, I don’t feel much need to make a big splash. I am more interested in what can happen when enough of us make contact, one person at a time.

Put yourself around people. Pay attention. Carry some love with you. And when the opportunity presents itself, give a little away.

Then do it again tomorrow.

You may never know where your kindness travels or whose life it touches after it leaves you. But every time we put a little more love into the world, we change the world by exactly that much. And if enough of us keep doing it, one person at a time, I don’t think there is anything small about that at all.